As well as collections of original archive materials, museum items and early books we will be hosting activities for visitors to engage with (only those that wish to!) this includes dressing up and maybe a bit of role play using an early language learning book, John Florio's Second Frutes.

SR 96 - John Florio's Second Frutes. 1591

John Florio is perhaps best known for his translation of Montaigne’s Essais, published in 1603 and so well written that it was the chosen version even of Shakespeare’s contemporaries who could read French. Shakespeare is known to have used Florio's translation for parts of The Tempest and King Lear. Florio's Second Frutes takes the form of a parallel-text dialogue book encouraging people to learn from real life situations rather than through grammar and exercises. It is interesting to compare modern phrase books that we take on holiday with Florio's book, have you ever looked at the phrase book and thought, 'I'm not sure when I would ever need to say that'? Well Florio's book is full of such conversations. In this video we demonstrate the dialogues for going to the shops, at the haberdasher's and a rather thorough morning greeting. The conversations are full of proverbs and sayings as well as useful phrases.

We have only been reading the English dialogues of course, if you are an Italian speaker, you can come along and have a go at the Italian pages too. We will have these dialogues printed out ready for willing participants to attempt and if you are feeling theatrical, we will also have costumes for dressing up and of course the original book to view in the display.

Italian and English pages in Florio's Second Frutes

There will be so much more to see in our displays and you can find out more in our previous blog post. We hope to see you there!

Thanks to Madeleine and Mary for their performances in the video and to Nicola for our lovely costumes and props.

Get involved

Useful

Follow us

Shakespeare's New Place

Walk in Shakespeare’s footsteps and meet the man behind the works.

The independent charity that cares for the world’s greatest Shakespeare heritage sites in Stratford-upon-Avon, and promotes the enjoyment and understanding of his works, life and times all over the world. Celebrating Shakespeare is at the heart of everything we do.